New Delhi: After nearly five years of inconclusive feasibility studies, the government has formally abandoned its long-pending proposal to expand INS Baaz, the Indian Navy air station at Campbell Bay in the Nicobar Islands. A greenfield international airport at Galathea Bay has now been cleared to proceed in its place.
The INS Baaz expansion had initially carried considerable strategic appeal. Upgrading an already-operational naval airstrip into a full-fledged civil-cum-strategic airport appeared cost-effective, logistically straightforward, and well-suited to consolidating India’s presence at the southernmost reaches of the Andaman & Nicobar archipelago – a chain of islands whose geographic position at the mouth of the Malacca Strait gives it disproportionate strategic weight.
That logic did not survive contact with ground realities.
Site assessments identified a hill rising over 80 metres on the northern flank of INS Baaz as a fundamental aviation safety hazard for wide-bodied commercial aircraft. This obstacle that could not be engineered away without excavation costs and construction timelines that made the entire proposition untenable. Runway expansion would also have encroached on inhabited settlements, raising the prospect of displacing local communities.
Ecologists warned, further, that sustained flight operations at the existing naval airstrip would inflict significantly greater damage on local fauna than a purpose-built greenfield facility – no minor consideration in one of India’s most ecologically sensitive island chains.
08/06/2026 India Sentinels
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